The Kurds Still Need Protectors

Published: April 28, 1991

It's realistic for Kurdish political leaders to negotiate with Saddam Hussein for autonomy inside Iraq. But it's equally realistic for Kurdish refugees, and Washington, to doubt whether the Iraqi dictator will abide by the provisions of any agreement.

That's why the Bush Administration is right to move ahead with its plans to secure, with U.S. troops, safe havens for Kurdish refugees in northwestern Iraq. And Washington has been wise to press U.N. officials to internationalize the humanitarian effort.

Kurdish negotiators in Baghdad last week announced an agreement in principle with Saddam Hussein to revive autonomy provisions first negotiated in 1970 but never fully implemented.

That's the right objective. To insist on a fully independent Kurdistan would spur opposition not only from any conceivable Iraqi government, but from neighboring states as well. Nor can two million Kurds remain indefinitely in improvised tent cities or count on permanent military protection from abroad.

But Kurdish refugees understandably distrust Saddam Hussein's promises. He has murderously betrayed them in the past and has been slow to withdraw his armed police from the safe havens carved out by U.S., British and French troops.

Washington is right to persist in the safe haven plan, constructing secure camps to shelter the hundreds of thousands of Kurds still precariously perched in the mountains along the Turkish border. Once these Kurds are safely re-established back in Iraq, there will be time to work out the security guarantees needed to allow a prudent withdrawal of Western forces.

That process could take time. Meanwhile, U.S., British and French troops are inside Iraq, compromising Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity. Saddam Hussein, not the allies, is responsible for this legally anomalous situation. But it remains an uncomfortable one for allied capitals.

Given the tragic results of a similar use of Western military forces for humanitarian ends in Lebanon eight years ago, President Bush and military leaders worry about the risks of being drawn into future Iraqi civil strife.

The best solution would be an early hand-over of security as well as resettlement arrangements to an adequately armed United Nations contingent. U.N. officials have been reluctant to challenge Baghdad's objections to an armed U.N. presence. Yet Iraqi sovereignty is infringed upon less by a formally defined U.N. operation than by the ad hoc presence of Western armies.

There cannot be a "new world order" worthy of the name without the U.N. assuming a more active interventionist role. Northwestern Iraq is an appropriate place to start.